


Unlimited Astral Works

by crystalsexarch



Series: Unlimited Astral Works [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angst, Caretaking, Dragoon Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Elezen Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Established Relationship, G'raha is trans and that's just how it is friends, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Male Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Masturbation, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-02-24 20:08:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21504418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystalsexarch/pseuds/crystalsexarch
Summary: Short stories that focus on the canon developed (developing) in Hedera Helix, featuring a specific Elezen, Dragoon, male WoL. Table of contents to be included upon further addition of content. That means trans G'raha Tia so be emotionally ready for that.Chapter Four - G:Beginning of Heavensward. Florian is not happy to return so suddenly to Ishgard.
Relationships: G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch & Original Character(s), G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch/Warrior of Light
Series: Unlimited Astral Works [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1531463
Comments: 16
Kudos: 56





	1. For You and Yours

**Author's Note:**

> Crystal Sexarch [Lefane]Last Saturday at 11:02 AM  
> All this craft-related teleporting I'm doing make me want to write about WoL returning to the Tower all aether-exhausted from the hard work and Raha must care for them but I dunno if I actually will so to clan nutsy it goes
> 
> This got 11 :eyes: reacts so here it fucking goes, eh?

It sounded like someone dropping a platter in a ballroom, but the Ocular was no ballroom, nor was Raha expecting anyone to enter carrying much more than a lance, a pack, and a crown of flowers. When he realized the sound of one decked in mail falling to the ground might not sound all that different from an overburdened butler, he thrust his book to the side and rushed to peak out from the Umbilicus.

“Florian?” he said. A slit of light fell from his private quarters over the Portal’s platform. It cut just through a tuft of blond hair. Cracking the door a bit more, the light exposed the Elezen’s limp form, his frame slumped down the stairs, long-lashed eyelids closed, as though his body had walked through the Portal and left his mind behind.

“Florian!”

This time Raha lunged forward and nearly tripped over something cold and sharp cutting into his foot. The pang had his attention for a moment, and he’d whirled half around before coming to his knees and sliding close to his lover. Close enough to hear the fevered breaths that slipped from his lips, to feel the sweat on his brow. His eyes fluttered at the touch and a soft voice came. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve...dropped some few items…”

“Are you all right?” Raha gripped his shoulders and turned him over, craning to check for wounds, blood, bruises, anything out of the ordinary. Ears, pointed as always, nose straight and unblemished, cheekbones high. Though Raha had expected him to return wearing the regalia of a Dragoon, Florian wore a sort of vest that left his arms exposed and trousers that looked like they’d seen more hard work than many a man. The attire would protect him from little, Raha thought, and if he'd been truly uninjured when he entered, he was likely to walk away with a few sore spots after the tumble.

“I’m perfectly fine.” The Elezen’s eyes closed again, like he’d never been lucid in the first place. The weight of his body sat on Raha’s thighs.

“You’ve...you’ve collapsed.” He found the same scar on Florian’s cheek, the other on his forehead. Nothing new. Nothing _obvious_. And that worried him all the more. His tail lashed over the cool floor. “Yet you say you are perfectly fine?”

“I need but a moment.” He waved his hand until it fell to his chest without an ilm of grace. “The ore...I will…”

_Ore?_

Raha’s gaze flicked to the side. Rocks. Rocks are what he had tripped on. Sharp and shiny and _why in the world did he have so many rocks_? He followed the trail to a busted satchel, lumpy, half empty, its contents having spilled across the Ocular. Raha’s ears straightened. “By the - what is all this for?”

So focused was the Exarch on the materials dusting his floor, he failed to notice the hand Florian had managed to raise until it was already tracing the crystal of his cheek. “My, my, you’re handsome...” he said, starry-eyed. “Would you...help me home?”

“Home? But you’re…”

“I’ve someone very important waiting on me...back in Norvrandt...have you heard…?” He turned and pushed his nose into Raha’s thigh and exhaled completely, like he planned to spend the night in that position. His breath was warm through the fabric of the Exarch's shorts, enough to make him blush. Without his mind’s explicit permission, his crystal hand dropped to Florian's head and stroked as he would a stray kitten.

_One thing is certain...he is exhausted._

The Tower hummed as Raha bid more illumination. Trying his best not to disturb Florian, he craned his neck to get a better look at his skin. Soot powdered his biceps. At first glance it looked as though his hands had been dipped in light paint. In truth, he must have been wearing gloves and laboring on something messy, the leather leaving crisp lines on his forearms. Raha ran his finger over his elbow and the color rubbed onto his skin.

Florian shuffled. “I shouldn’t stay long, sir…”

The Exarch frowned.

_Another certainty...he is delusional…_

Yet, the scents of rainwater and greenery lingered in his hair, even amongst the stone, the wood dust, whatever else he’d gotten into. And beneath that Raha felt almost a crawling in his aether, an un-comfort and wrongness. Something worth soothing away. With knitted eyebrows, the Exarch bent to kiss his lover’s forehead. Regardless of where he’d run into trouble, he had wound up somewhere safe.

-

Florian woke to the sound of a lute. The song rang so light and pretty that for a blissful moment he missed the seething pain in his skull. And of course when he pried his eyes open and saw Raha sitting at his desk, back turned a few fulms away, instinct told him _he_ was the source of such music. The smaller man wore far more casual robes and had let loose his hair.

What Florian remembered before those moments - bitter wind biting at his sweat, a pulse that shot strong throughout his body, heavy weight on his shoulders. _Just one more trip_ , he kept thinking. _One more load and I’ve done my part._

He remembered Francel accosting him in the Firmament, offering a glass of something or other. Florian had waved him off and made for the Aetheryte. He had to do this. He’d left Ishgard once and wasn’t keen on leaving it again without proving he was leaving for the right reasons this time.

Francel had insisted to no avail. The Warrior of Light and Darkness could away once more and back without worrying for his health. Whether covered in blood or ash or dust it seemed nary a soul trusted him with his most basic needs. And after all he’d done, on more stars than one, he felt not the need to prove himself as a warrior but as someone capable of existing without the complement of a squad at his back.

But perhaps...he could stand to lean on a certain Exarch.

Florian didn’t remember teleporting to the First. He wasn’t quite certain _where_ he was off to. But for whatever reason, his body must have decided the place he needed to be was with the man he loved - the man whose ears now flickered back ahead of his gaze. “Florian?” he said. “You’re awake.”

“What time is it?” He rubbed his forehead, realizing the music was not coming from Raha or any instrument at all but an orchestrion. He gestured to it. “When did you…?”

“I had Lyna bring one this morning.” He swooped to the sofa onto his knees and landed with his hands on Florian’s cheeks. “Don’t worry for the hour. How are you feeling?”

Florian closed his eyes at the touch, smiling. Twin sensations at his left and right, cool crystal and warm skin. “You could have sung for me, no?”

“I did.” Fingers brushed through his hair. “And when I woke, I sang more, but - “

Eyes open. “When you woke?”

Raha looked to the side. “Well, when you arrived I’d been half-prepared to sleep anyway, though I was happy to care for you as I could.”

He sat up. “What time _is_ it?”

“Ah…” Raha relaxed his posture. “Well, all right. You came just after midnight and...in only a few bells it shall be midnight again. But I assure you, it’s a blessing to have slept through the worst of your - “

“ _Midnight_?” Something pulled his gaze to the ground, where he stared with big, blank eyes. “Halone…”

Raha’s hand weighed on his shoulder, rubbed him in a way that made his body sway. “Suffice it to say you needed the rest.”

“And it didn’t...worry you when I slept a full sun?”

“Of course it worried me.” Raha’s fingers tensed and slid from Florian’s shoulder to his bicep before coming to rest on his thigh. “Though you didn’t quite sleep the _entire_ time.”

“N-no?” Florian rubbed his forehead like it’d stop the throbbing and fell back onto the sofa. Raha rose from the floor and joined him, leaning against the arm rest so he could lay his legs over Florian’s. The tip of his tail swung around and curled over his knees. After a moment, the music on the orchestrion ebbed away. Florian didn’t speak again until it had found the next song, another lilting lullaby. “What happened when I woke?”

“Would you first tell me why you were covered in soot and carrying ponzes and ponzes of ore?”

“Hm?” He raised an eyebrow. _Did I really not tell Raha…?_ “Well, as it happens - “

“I did my best to keep everything sorted, by the way.” He was twirling his fingers together, twisting his lips. “When you fell, the contents of your pack lost any semblance of arrangement, so I’m afraid I may have mixed some various materials.”

“You sorted my…?”

“‘Sorted’ is perhaps too strong a word. I judged by color and texture as I was able.”

“You…” Florian squinted until his growing smile forced his cheeks up, his eyes closed, a laugh from his throat. And it wouldn’t stop, not even when he tried to choke it off by pushing his knuckles into his teeth.

Raha’s ears went back. “What?”

Florian rubbed Raha’s hand between his own. “I can guarantee you the ore was just as sorted on the floor as I’d had it in my pack, you silly, wonderful man.”

“Ah hah…” With his crystal arm, he scratched his head and rolled his eyes. A poor attempt to hide his embarrassment. “Well, I pray you won’t fault me for wanting something to occupy my _deeply_ troubled mind. How would you feel seeing me stumbling about and half delusional?”

“I _have_ seen you like that.”

“Hmm.” Space enough for one blink. “So you have.” Raha modified his position so he could wrap an arm around Florian and nuzzle into his shoulder. Florian felt his ear twitch in adjustment. “Tell me, then, of your adventures.”

He spoke of Ishgard’s call for a workforce, of his invalid emotional obligation to serve the nation he’d abandoned, of bells spent traversing landscapes of the Source and the First in search of more more more materials, better materials. The more he spoke the more he relied on “teleport” as an integral part of his story-telling vocabulary. For him, the pieces finally started coming together.

“You are a man of singular focus,” Raha said. “Rising to the cause as soon as you’re aware of it, and rising much higher than most, I would say.”

“Praise me not, lest you have room somewhere to store my burgeoning ego,” Florian said, pecking the crown of his lover’s head.

“That explains why you were so grimy when you arrived here, aether sick.”

It occurred to Florian for the first time since he’d achieved lucidity that he no longer reeked of sweat and metal. And what was he wearing? Naught but his smallclothes and an overlarge tunic. He leaned back from Raha. “Did you…?”

The Exarch looked toward the ceiling. “I tried the best I could to make sure you’d be comfortable.”

He ogled his arms and searched. “Color me impressed. I can find nary a spot.”

“I’ll admit it was quite the undertaking...especially since…”

“What.”

Raha brushed his hair behind his shoulders and avoided eye contact. “I told you earlier you did _not_ sleep the entire time.”

“Yes?”

“You...mistook my efforts to clean you up for ministrations of a _different_ nature.” He crossed his arms and pouted. “And in your stupor you thought the best course of action was to strip yourself down and fall asleep on top of me when I advised you save your lust for later.”

The color rushed from Florian’s face. He pursed his lips and edged away from Raha, rubbing his cheeks with both hands. “I am...so sorry.”

“At least you recognized me this time.”

He peeked through his fingers. “What?”

“When you first arrived you asked me to help you return to Norvrandt.” He smiled a cat’s smile. “And you called me handsome.”

Though he winced, Florian couldn’t help but glean some amusement from the image. “I am _very_ sorry.” One quick breath in, one out. Then he turned to Raha and added, “You _are_ handsome.”

“As...as are you.”

Somehow their fingers ended up entwined and they spent a good deal of time staring at each others’ faces and feeling quite embarrassed about how easy to read they’d become. Florian went in for the inevitable kiss, but met Raha’s fingertip instead. At contact, his eyes widened.

“I need you to promise me,” Raha said with quiet confidence. “Next we part you will treat yourself the way I treat you.” He ran his thumb over the scar on Florian's cheek.

Florian leaned into it and looked down. “I suppose it would behoove me to listen to one with such experience.” Raha squeezed his hand hard - an act of comfort, certainly, but also one of emphasis. When the pressure went away, Florian looked back with softer eyes, a gaze willing to admit that _yes_ , sometimes _I am a fool and I am afraid and you are the only thing that makes sense._

And he was thankful his gaze managed to say that, because the words he had come up with were far less meaningful.

“Mark my words, Raha. I will endeavor to treat myself as you’d have me treated from now on,” he said, lying back on the couch. He had to shift his hips forward to leave room enough for his companion without straining his neck against the other side. “But there are certain things I’d rather you treat me to yourself.”

Raha hummed out a half-groan, half-sigh and came to lie upon Florian’s chest, crystal fingers at his collarbone. “By my assessment, it’s you who owes me, what with the work I’ve put in on your behalf.”

Florian smiled, sorry for his persisting headache but thankful for the good rest he’d gotten. He could use that energy soon enough. “I’m sure we can arrange something mutually beneficial.”


	2. Body - T

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> G'raha Tia is troubled by a patronizing letter he receives from his tribe and seeks validation from Krile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something I wrote forever ago when I was mad at my mom and realized should probably be a part of the UAW canon.

The potions were bitter, but he outdid them.

Now they called him Tia. Now that he’d poisoned himself, mutilated himself, _made_ himself a man in their eyes instead of _making the alternative work_. Both paths would have led to pain, but G’raha knew only one could lead to a future.

Or was he being dramatic?

“You’re not being dramatic,” Krile said from her seat across from him at the table. A mountain of books hid her expression, but her voice rang sincere. “You _are_ being too loud, though.”

“Truly?” He wilted over the table, let his nose smush against the musty old pages of something he hadn’t been studying for at least half a bell now. “Forgive me.” Ranting in a library didn’t sound _entirely_ unlike him, but the shame of having done it was too much for a man already burdened with thoughts that burned.

Krile’s muffled laughter perked his ears forward. “Studious to frenzied to melancholic...you are a mercurial man.”

_Man_ , he thought. Even now, after he’d known her for months, and she’d known him only as G’raha Tia, the word could warm him on a winter night, coming from her or his peers. But when he’d seen it on _that missive_ , he couldn’t help but feel his tribe’s eyes on his back, the salt in their words. _You’ve become a fine young man G’raha Tia._ He ground his teeth together, thinking of other things they’d told him, long before they knew he _looked the part_ in their minds.

_You’ve already got that eye - why make it any harder for yourself?_

“You could reply, you know,” Krile said. A book slid from the top of the pile and into her hands. With a tiny thud, she dropped from the chair onto the ground and walked to G’raha’s side. “Or not. You _could_ pursue another avenue entirely. One of your own choosing.”

He crossed his arms and squinted. “Far be it from me to choose the easy path.”

She held her book to her chest and smiled. “The opportunity I have in mind, should you choose to pursue it, will certainly prove to be anything but easy.”

“Oh?”

The smile she gave looked more like the sly smile of a Miqo’te than that of a Lalafell. “I’ll leave you with a tease until I can ascertain more details.”

“Oh, come now!”

“This particular path involves the Hero of Eorzea.” She broke eye contact and made for the library’s exit.

The Hero of Eorzea…?

“Wait!” He stood. “You can’t leave me with just that!”

She turned over her shoulder and held a finger at her lips. “Shh. In due time, Raha. For now, to your studies.” She kept walking.

He let his shoulders droop a bit. Soon he’d wilted back into the chair entirely. Much as the page’s contents had slipped from his mind, so too had his troubled thoughts on the message from his fairweather tribe.

Now he thought only of adventure.


	3. A Calculated Risk - E

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Exarch has yet to summon the Warrior of Light to the First...but that doesn't mean he doesn't think about him every day. **Explicit**.

The Exarch did not often take time for himself. Even more seldom did he take time to _please_ himself. Nonetheless, on certain nights such indulgence helped him forget the unyielding brightness of the First and the bittersweet glory of his destiny.

So he let the name fall from his lips; it had been a while since he tasted those forbidden syllables, sweet and tempting like ripe, stolen fruit. For all he wanted to hear it spoken, he whispered but _once_ , and only then because he had no choice. Pressure at his heat, even from his own hands, was enough to make him weak and wet.

Red-cheeked already, he swept his robes up to his waist in his crystal arm. He was sitting on a bed in his private quarters with his legs bent beneath him. Fabric sound in his right arm, he let his left hang timidly between his thighs, almost as though he’d forgotten how to get it done.

He closed his eyes and realized how watched he felt under the sting of his own judgement. That was no way to get off. Embarrassed as he may be, the Exarch would need a concrete fantasy to engulf him. It had always been difficult for him to know what he wanted sexually, especially in an adolescence of transition and self-assertion. But one thing he knew beyond a doubt:

He wanted the Warrior of Light.

He thought of Mor Dhona. He and the Dragoon had been intimate but never consummate. One night in particular stood out as a potential starting point; in reality, they had held hands by the fire, retreated to the Warrior’s tent, and kissed slowly, learned each others bodies through gentle, cautious touches. The Exarch remembered running his finger over the Warrior’s eyebrows like he was painting them in. It was soft. Warm. But now he held this memory, turned it over, breathed into it until it scalded him from the inside out.

What if they had held each other tighter? What if he had straddled the Warrior until he could feel his want?

The Exarch opened his mouth and held his fingers against his smallclothes. That was enough to have him doubled over in anticipation. _I’m doing this,_ he thought, holding himself up with his crystal arm. _Forgive me_.

These were things he had thought before, though he couldn’t recall how much time had passed. Long enough for pleasure to grow foreign. He shifted his body over his hand until his fingers grew slick. _But it could have been the Warrior beneath him. He could have been grinding over his tip, testing his entrance. Taking in the heat._

He breathed out at the thought and scrambled to slip his fingers beneath his waistband, then over his aching clit. He bucked forward without thinking about it. The pleasure was much to absorb, even before he wet his fingers with his own arousal.

He had been alone this entire time as Exarch. No—he was alone before then. So much had held him back from baring himself. Even as he rolled his middle finger over his soft spots, that sadness was difficult to ignore.

_If Florian were here_ , he thought, _we could start over_.

It wasn't true, of course. The nature of his mission would never allow such selfishness. That wasn’t the kind of man he would allow himself to become.

_I could ask him if he would have me...or if I could have him…_

The thought made him shudder. He imagined himself with a thick piece at his hips, slick with oil. Florian was much taller, longer, but they could find a position. He could tease that man's hole with his tip until precum dripped onto the bed. And then he'd push himself inside and ride the ecstasy of validation, of pleasuring a man as a man, of being recognized sexually in a way that didn’t make his brain implode—of knowing his partner had never doubted his manhood, never needed to be fucked to see Raha for what he was.

He thrummed himself and winced; he could hear his arousal, with how wet he was. Raising his hips, he set his thumb in the trail of red hair leading to his intimates and rolled forward to take his fingers in.

He was hot. Ready. Willing. But now that he was close to where he wanted—totally committed to the fantasy—he couldn't help but remember another reason he was not traditionally eager to masturbate.

The lights of the Tower flickered as he lightly fucked himself. Perhaps a bystander wouldn't have noticed. Perhaps it could've been written off as a product of the mysterious glow. But his connection told him it was far more visible in other locations. Outside for example. In the blistering light.

_I must make haste._

But he _wanted_ to make it last. He wanted to roll into his back and spread his lips with his crystal fingers to grant his spoken hand better access. He wanted to bite his own tail and think about the expressions he might be able to pull from the Warrior, the blushing, lusty faces of toe-curling pleasure.

He grunted and turned his head the other way. Sweat coated his brow.

How many times could he make Florian come, if he had the chance? Would the Elezen touch himself while Raha worked, or would the unyielding rhythm of his cock be enough to spin his world around?

Raha came with a sudden burst of liquid. He rolled onto his back and tensed his thighs so he could thrust up into his hand. He imagined he was thrusting into Florian's ass instead, that the Elezen was riding him like his life depended on it.

And as Raha came, the lights of the Tower surged so brightly they nearly drew him from his fantasy—perhaps they should have—but he let himself worry only about how long he could make himself throb with pleasure, with how deeply he could feel the orgasm at the tip of his tightly coiled tail.

When he deflated, he was in complete darkness. The Tower was not happy. Though his own eyes had fluttered shut, a kind of vision came to him in other ways; Allagan systems calculated, reacted, rebooted if they had to. Tiny pieces clicked together or apart. It, and thus the Exarch, were deciding what, if anything, had gone wrong. What had broken? What had been misjudged?

The room hummed and recovered its typical blue glow. Raha laughed a little, but not from amusement. It was the kind of laugh a man offered to diffuse a situation. To tell himself and his companions that he was safe and sorry, that he’d stop rocking the boat. It didn’t take long for the Tower to decide it had experienced a small disturbance of no lingering consequence. Everything was fine. Naught was amiss.

But the Exarch never really managed to convince himself he hadn’t gotten the numbers wrong; he had miscalculated something along the way and deprived himself, his greatest friend, and perhaps even entire stars of the futures they deserved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> /chewing a piece of straw You ever feel pain, boy?


	4. Warm Welcoming - G

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> G. Beginning of Heavensward. Florian is not happy to return so suddenly to Ishgard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh? Haurchefant? What about him?

“So, what do you think? Be honest—it’s great, isn’t it?”

Haurchefant was nothing if not sincere, and that being the case, Florian saw fit to give him nothing but sincerity in return, even if it stung. He was looking not at the knight, but at the snow pouring down outside, plodding against the window and melting, dripping, pooling and freezing again on the outer adornments of Manor Fortemps. A pointless cycle, endlessly repeated. This was where he was to spend his days until when, precisely? “I...cannot pretend I am thrilled to return to Ishgard,” Florian said. “Though I am grateful...for you and your family’s hospitality.”

While the Warrior spoke, Haurchefant’s hold on his own attitude slipped just a bit. He _admired_ Florian...perhaps to an unreasonable degree, though this he forbade himself from admitting. There was much he did not know about this Dragoon. Much he hoped to understand. The trouble was asking the right questions without prying or poking at his companion’s open wounds. All he wanted to do, in a sense, was keep him from bleeding out on the floor, perhaps apply a few figurative bandages or call for a conjurer if that would help. If the man would _have_ his help.

After a while, Florian turned over his shoulder with his eyebrows high and—were those _tears_ in his eyes? He looked a bit like a wounded animal, one striving to maintain an air of self-sufficiency. “Forgive me,” he said. “If I may have a moment.”

“Ah! Of course.” He bowed his head and made for the door.

A moment, he could give. He would give much more.

\----

Florian _wanted_ to return to Ishgard. But not with his tail between his legs, bloodied and beaten by betrayers. This was no _I told you so_. If anything, his return, when noticed by the right forces, would only hurt his case, would reinforce the pervasive mentality of tradition, ever-blind and overbearing. Perhaps his departure was premature. But his return was even more so.

It burned him to remember the disappointed lines beneath his mother’s gray eyes. _You’ll come to your senses_ , she wrote in every letter she deigned to draw. And while she must have grimaced to know her only son was _wasting away_ in Gridania, the worst part was how truly she loved him—how she really believed that he was wrong, and that Ishgard’s isolationism was for the best, would produce the happiest outcome, and most cleanly lead to the preservation of their _way of life._

And what a way of life it was.

But at least the knight wasn’t watching him push his fingernails into his palms. For all his presence, Florian thought, Haurchefant could make for an interesting case study in what Ishgard could and could not do to a man. For example, he bore an awfully persistent smile for one whose lot in life had afforded him a peculiar set of privileges: the right to serve, live comfortably, and read to a certain class of citizen as bastard first, knight second.

Florian blinked and looked up and through the window, to the stone-grey clouds above and let slip a tiny, secret prayer: _may this man be something more than a happy fool._ For if he could find one friend in Ishgard, he could perhaps stand the cold and colder shoulders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NGL it's been so long I forget how I was formatting summaries and such...

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you dearly for reading.
> 
> Find me on Twitter, Tumblr, wherever @ crystalsexarch.
> 
> Also if you want to join a highly supportive, active community of Exarch fans on Discord hmu.


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